Well, I’m now on holidays. This is customary whenever the Olympics are on, I’m off. On Friday morning I went to the shed and was applying Panel Line Accent Colors to the Bakers Road, road over rail bridge. During the week when online talking to some mates, it became very obvious that a photo of a similar bridge to that which I am modelling, showed that the bridge timbers were very, very faded and not the same as my bridge was currently displaying. So out came the light grey panel line accent color. It was applied to the various posts and rails on the bridge. Later that morning I headed into town for a lunch date with my work colleagues as a mate was leaving work on that day. So on Saturday I applied quite a few more washes of light grey. In the afternoon, I brought another road over rail bridge up from the shed, and sat at the kitchen table watching the Olympics and applied Light Grey Panel Line Accent Color to that bridge as well. This bridge also also to receive some corrugated iron sheets applied along the bridge rails. These strips of corrugated iron had been sitting on the bridge for the last 12 months. I have no idea where I got them from. So these metal sheets were also hit with various panel line accent colors. Later that evening I white glued the metal sheets to the bridge. That bridge has now been returned to its position on the layout.
Sunday’s job was to permanently attach the corrugated iron sheets to my Park Road Trans-shipment Shed. Again, this model has been sitting on the layout for quite some time. The corrugated iron is a single sleeve that fit over the entire building. So around lunchtime I got out the panel line accent colors and applied them to the shed frame and roof structure. It looks pretty good. I then applied some of those same colours to the outside sheath that forms the corrugated iron cover. The corrugated iron has now been glued onto the shed frame. That is ready to be placed back on the layout.
Monday this week, I plan to apply some panel line accent colors to my Richmond River rail bridge. I will see if there are any tweaks I need to do to that model as well. Maybe I can also paint some stains on the concrete piers or the abutments. This bridge structure is actually three different types of bridges. The main span is a Pratt Through Truss Bridge. On the northern end there is a half through plate girder bridge, and on the southern end there are four spans of plate deck girder bridge. All these sections will get the weathering touch.
My aim on the holidays is to finish to an acceptable standard a number of structures and have these written up and then present these for assessment by our NMRA Divisional AP officer. This is Arthur, and he just lives about 6-7 km from my place, so he will be busy scoring my models for my AP certificate for structures.
But first thing is to put all the documentation together for him to assess. I cannot find my plans for the Park Road Trans-shipment Shed and a few photos that another Arthur sent me a few years ago. I am pretty sure that is all on my old PC. I plan to fire that up tomorrow and go looking. I have plans for the two road overbridges, and some information and lots of photos of the original Richmond River bridge taken from various angles.
After that, I will be left with one more model to get judged to attempt to get a merit award. That will be the Cassino Overhead booking office and combined road bridge. I already have one model that was assessed a few years back at a New England Model Railway Convention. I then need to submit my paperwork along with 6 other models that don't get scored, but need to be viewed and I am on my way to another NMRA AP certificate hopefully sometime in the next few months, if everything comes together.